El Nino and El Nina are opposite extremes of continuous but far ranging changes in water surface temperature, precipitation, trade winds, and sea level in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, which portend extreme changes and reversals in usual global climate and weather patterns, resulting in dangerous temperature changes, storms, floods and droughts world wide, with severe economic impacts, disease and death.
These phenomena even slow the Earth's rotation, which has long-term global climate implications.
The following programs are in effect to study and predict these phenomena, their indicators, consequences, and the possible remediation of their catastrophic effects: Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science; Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization; the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization; in the U.S. the National Weather Service, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Union College, and the University of Syracuse; Germany's Max Plank Institute for Meteorology; China's National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center and the Marine Environmental Protection Department of the State Oceanic Administration; Bangladesh's Space Research and Remote Sensing Organization; an unspecified, but inferably internationally operated Pacific-wide El Nino detection system; and many private climate and weather forecasting companies.
Scientific technologies and techniques for studying these phenomena include: computer modeling, simulation and forecasting of global climate and weather; onsite and remote satellite measurement of changes in weather data, deep ocean waves, sea level, surface temperature, greenhouse gas concentrations, clouds, rain, severe storms, sun spot activity, and sediment layers; and weather-correlated epidemiological studies.
